That’s a wrap: Supreme Court term closes election-year term with a show of politics and partisanship.
The Supreme Court has always been a political body and has, at least in the modern era, strenuously professed otherwise. But the 2023-2024 Court term shrinks the ground for the argument that politics drops its bags at the courthouse door.
Several rulings that bear the most weight for companies were decided by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, including a landmark case last week that sweeps away decades of precedent about government regulatory power.
The Court also split on the same 6-3 ideological lines – all six conservatives selected by Republican presidents and all three liberal justices chosen by Democrats – on important cases involving voting maps, treatment of homeless people, gun control and the limits of a president’s immunity to criminal prosecution. Those cases will have ripple effects for organizations even if they do not carry the broad cultural significance of the Court’s recent-year rulings on abortion and affirmative action.
In other notable rulings, the Court limited the powers of the EPA and the SEC while siding with the Biden administration in cases involving online speech and student loans and postponing a question about universal access to medication abortion.
Those rulings did not all break down on strict ideological lines, but the public perception of bias appears set. A recent survey found a solid majority of Americans think Supreme Court justices are more likely than not to rule based on their ideological views.
The six-member conservative super-majority appears set at least until after the next presidential election, and perhaps for years after. Justices tend to retire when a president of their political preference is in charge.
If former president Donald Trump wins, he may be able to expand the majority if a liberal justice retires or dies. Or he could improve the actuarial odds of the existing 6-3 split by replacing an older conservative justice with a younger one.
If President Biden wins a second term, he could only change the balance of the Court in the unlikely event that two of the conservative justices retired or died.
